Born from an August 2023 residency with the Alaska State Park Service, Saapato’s In Alaska transforms field recordings of coast, forest, and ice into a seven-chapter sonic journey where whales, wind, and water converge with electronic textures to evoke the grandeur, abundance, and fragile weight of the Alaskan wilds.
Alaska’s wilds echo in sound
Born of an August 2023 residency with Alaska State Park Service, Saapato wandered Juneau by day gathering sounds from coast, forest, and ice, then shaped them into music after nightfall. Called “a sweeping study of abundance, grandeur, intrusion, and the weight of what may soon be lost,” In Alaska unfolds as a breathing audio chronicle. Each piece drifts through glacial hush, spacious reverberations, whale-song corridors, and salmon-run surges, offering calm yet otherworldly passages. Across seven linked chapters, Saapato layers recordings of whales, water, wind, birds, fish, and passing boats with synth lines routed through a tangle of guitar pedals. The result is a sonic voyage that carries listeners straight into Alaskan wilds, where natural voices and electronic timbres merge as one.
In Alaska is available on AKP Recordings. [Bandcamp]
